E

(1762-1851)

Joanna Baillie's early childhood was passed at Bothwell, Scotland, where
she was born in 1762. Of this time she drew a picture in her well-known
birthday lines to her sister:--

"Dear Agnes, gleamed with joy, and dashed with tears, O'er us
have glided almost sixty years Since we on Bothwell's bonny
braes were seen, By those whose eyes long closed in death
have been: Two tiny imps, who scarcely stooped to gather The
slender harebell, or the purple heather; No taller than the
foxglove's spiky stem, That dew of morning studs with silvery
gem. Then every butterfly that crossed our view With joyful
shout was greeted as it flew, And moth and lady-bird and
beetle bright In sheeny gold were each a wondrous sight. Then
as we paddled barefoot, side by side, Among the sunny
shallows of the Clyde, Minnows or spotted par with twinkling
fin, Swimming in mazy rings the pool within, A thrill of
gladness through our bosoms sent Seen in the power of early
wonderment."

[Illustration: JOANNA BAILLIE]

When Joanna was six her father was appointed to the charge of the kirk
at Hamilton. Her early growth went on, not in books, but in the
fearlessness with which she ran upon the top of walls and parapets of
bridges and in all daring. "Look at Miss Jack," said a farmer, as she
dashed by: "she sits her horse as if it were a bit of herself." At
eleven she could not read well. "'Twas thou," she said in lines to
her sister--

"'Twas thou who woo'dst me first to look
Upon the page of printed book,
That thing by me abhorred, and with address
Didst win me from my thoughtless idleness,
When all too old become with bootless haste
In fitful sports the precious time to waste.
Thy love of tale and story was the stroke
At which my dormant fancy first awoke,
And ghosts and witches in my busy brain
Arose in sombre show, a motley train."

In 1776 Dr. James Baillie was made Professor of Divinity at Glasgow
University. During the two years the family lived in the college
atmosphere, Joanna first read 'Comus,' and, led by the delight it
awakened, the great epic of Milton. It was here that her vigor and
disputatious turn of mind "cast an awe" over her companions. After her
father's death she settled, in 1784, with her mother and brother and
sister in London.

She had made herself familiar with English literature,